Month: August 2012

Since my last post I’ve been playing around with the textures, lighting and composting of my alternate Enterprise in order to make it look “real”. I’m using Cinema 4D v.11 and the multi-pass settings to get different layers/passes of the mesh, such as a specular pass, a lighting pass, a global illumination pass, etc. I take these passes into Photoshop and create a more dynamic, realistic, render of the Enterprise using filters, opacity settings and layer settings such as Multiply or Soft Light.

Instead of having one main light I am using two, one for illumination and one for specularity. I keep the illumination light low, at around 30% and bump up the specular light to 120%. This seems to work quite well. This also gives the mesh a metallic sheen and reflective quality without actually using a reflective map, which helps keep render times down. I’ve also added textures resembling peeling paint and small dents (from space debris) to suggest the Enterprise isn’t new and has been in the far reaches of unexplored space for a while.

Its been a long time since I lasted posted (over a year in fact) so I decided to show something I’ve been working on in my spare time. I guess you could call me a fairweather Star Trek fan. I grew up watching The Next Generation as a kid as well as the six films starring the original cast. I don’t know the ins and outs of the show or how transporters, warp drives, or the reverse tachyon side split burst array influx emitters work but I knew episodes like “Darmok” or “Best of Both Worlds” were damn good television.

One thing I liked more about the original series, and the movies as well, was the design of the Enterprise. Simple shapes were combined into an aesthetically pleasing design which suggested it could be repaired or maintained by Scotty and his underlings in the far reaches of the galaxy without retreating to any (space)ports, like sailing vessels of long ago. Yet when I first saw the new Enterprise design for 2009 re-boot film, I thought it was extremely ugly and jarring, despite sharing the same basic design features and principles as it’s 1960’s predecessor.